Overview
A fascinating survey of the history of political and economic ideas in the US that have led to an increasingly entrenched ultra-rich class of oligarchs. To an American, oligarchy is something that happens somewhere else. In Oligarchy in America, Luke Winslow reveals oligarchy’s deep intellectual roots and alarming growth in America. The book provides conceptual tools the lack of which have prevented Americans from recognizing oligarchy at home. Winslow argues that generic labels like “billionaires” for a class of ultra-rich masks the pervasive structures that entrench their power. He introduces instead the concept of democratic oligarchy—an institutional arrangement in which the ultra-rich form a class consciously creating and leveraging state power to accumulate wealth. Like a master class in political ideas, Winslow traces the intellectual lineage of oligarchy in the US. His lively and compulsively readable survey examines key rhetorical sources such as Herbert Spencer, Andrew Carnegie, Friedrich Hayek, Lewis Powell, Milton Friedman, Charles Koch, Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, and others. Oligarchy in America maps the connective web of oligarchic ideas uniting these disparate figures. By offering a lucid framework through which to view oligarchic ideas ambient in American culture, Winslow makes a vital contribution to readers and scholars of communication and rhetorical studies, public address, economics, and political science.
Full Product Details
Author: Luke Winslow
Publisher: The University of Alabama Press
Imprint: The University of Alabama Press
Weight: 0.454kg
ISBN: 9780817322069
ISBN 10: 081732206
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 10 October 2024
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
"""Oligarchy in America explains how arguments as diverse as Herbert Spencer's social Darwinism and Tucker Carlson's anti-elitism, suture the interests of the ultra-rich to state politics and disenfranchises the ordinary electorate, upending the arithmetic of democracy. It is a must read for those interested in rhetoric and the increasingly fraught politics of democracy."" --Catherine Chaput is author of Market Affect and the Rhetoric of Political Economic Debates"
Author Information
Luke Winslow is an associate professor of rhetorical studies in the Department of Communication at Baylor University. He is author of American Catastrophe: Fundamentalism, Climate Change, Gun Rights, and the Rhetoric of Donald J. Trump, Economic Injustice and the Rhetoric of the American Dream, and coauthor of Children as Rhetorical Advocates in Social Movements.
